Re: Namesake....

Hi Chris

yes i was about to pounce but the clarification that needs to be made is the
relation of becoming-woman to discourses of identity in the first place. as
you know, the child and the woman start off as fuzzy points in the point
diagram of 'his' oedipal identity, they do not have identity but are in an
indertimate relation to 'his' molarity. these 'points' strategically are
what neeed to become a line which is why becoming-woman is positioned before
the other becomings. Moira gatens suggests that there is not difference in
satus between becoming woman and all the other becomings and while this may
be philosophically correct it is not, pragmatically, the case. 'woman' as
undifferentiated other is very concrete lived false problem.  from where, i
am coming from, it is more relevant to say that there could be no
becoming-woman without an androcentric notion of gender identity.'woman' as
well as 'man' is something to be overcome! 

on another tact, Spivak's 'strategic essentialism' finds Deleuze and
Guattari naive on the issue of becoming-woman but i think she has missed the
point. it is the case that 'nomadism' resonates with the problems of
subaltern speech but in making the case for becoming-woman, D and G are
making a snapshot of a problem whose predicates need to be changed. the
machinic production of 'woman' as absent to herself, is what has been, like
it or not. it is only when the dialectical machine is dismantled that it is
possible to transvalue this 'it was' into thus i willed it! 

perhaps a better way of looking at the problem would be to think about the
production and grouping of n sex aggregates. why bother with transgender,
except as a lived false problem

Ruth.C
   

>>> chris jones <ccjones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 03/28 1:54 pm >>>

> Hi Ruth and list, again
 a quick clarification here which may be confusing....
I wrote
> To think that playing with gender identities, confusing gender, is a way
of
> becoming woman shows a great disrespect for D&Gs writings. In my
> understanding, gender identity is essential to becoming woman, in the
sense
> that there could be no becoming woman without gender identity. 

I am not saying that confusing gender cannot effect a becoming.... as I 
appear to suggest. What I am trying to say is what D&G say which is 
transgender does not equal becoming woman. What my questioning is more aimed

at is trying to think a distinction between identity as a temporary
strategic 
poltical position and the dialectical idea of identity formation and its
flip 
side deconstruction type of thing which says identity does not truly exist. 
A distinction then also between essential and essentialist. The question of 
oedipal pockets remains.

thought I had better jump in with this correction before you quite rightly 
went off the deep end.

Chris Jones.